Michael Jackson

I can't say I was effected greatly by news of Mr. Jackson's passing. Writing this piece has given me a slightly melancholic feel and has brought back memories, but mostly I've just had "Billy Jean" stuck in my head all day. Most of us were a little surprised to hear of his death as he was only 50, he had that line-up of shows in London coming up, and despite being kind of miniature and deathly looking I just figured he was still in good shape.

I never met the man but he's been around me since I was a child (which is a disturbing image, I must admit). I distinctly remember singing along to "ABC"* and "I'll Be There" when I was about eight (that was 1983 so he was a 15 year old kid), spinning Bad and Thriller when DJ-ing high school dances, the video for "Thriller" being a major event my freshman year at Tulane (the MTV broadcast was projected on a big screen in the basement of the campus bar), and I sold all his records (in staggeringly enormous quantities) for the decade I worked in record stores. His songs are part of the vast quilt of music in my life. It is sad that one of those pieces won't add to itself.

As a musician I never feel I am intimately acquainted with anyone I know through their songs. Though I have hung out with and even engineered live sound for many musical legends I have no personal connection to those people. They are just people I have met who happen to be famous and/or brilliantly talented and when the nice ones die it makes me a little sad. I have much less personal connection to Michael Jackson and, like so many people, many aspects of his personal life (that I was exposed to whether I wanted to be or not) disturbed me in many ways. His extravagant lifestyle was sickening. At one point this man had enough money to buy the Beatles catalog. And he was able to piss that money away on monkeys and theme park rides and go bankrupt?!? I don't even want to know this crap about this man but he was famous and rich and weird and kind of stupid and he made a bunch of great records. And he's dead. That's kind of sad.

But I'm going to die some day too, just as will all of you. There is a slew of people who are adults who have no memory of John Lennon being killed. It won't be long until there will be adults who don't remember Nirvana. Michael Jackson's music was around for all of us in a way that only we can relate to and under conditions which are gone forever. There will never be a time again when you can go cruise around the court square and here something like "Beat It" coming from every car because it was on the cool local radio station. There is no MTV so what are the chances there will be another dancing superstar to approach his status? Just trying to think of how much our world has changed since "ABC" seems nearly impossible. From cell phones to satellite radio to mp3 downloads to YouTube and Facebook, the world is utterly different and I doubt anyone can begin to aspire to the level of a Michael Jackson. Shouldn't every generation have a "Thriller" moment?

So yeah. I know this was a bit jumbled and repetitive but life is a bit jumbled and repetitive and the whole concept of Michael Jackson is jumbled and repetitive. It is sad the man is dead. Long live his recordings.

*My clearest memory of singing a Michael Jackson song (with that strange distortion all those early memories have) is singing "ABC" on the school bus when I was 8. We also sang "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" and I remember us getting the giggles over saying the word "damned." Do eight year olds still get embarrassed at saying "cuss words" out loud?